Editorial Eisenwald, IndieCade, and the Cult of Simplicity

[Davaris]

So RPG Fest with different categories is the answer. Make it a combination of expert panel and people's choice, so the experts can't get pretentious. How about reaching out to other RPG websites and making it big?

 

[whitepony]

I bet Cleve would like that Brenda's triagnle.

 

[Spectacle]

"RPG codex game festival"? Has a nice ring to it.

 

[FuriousGamer87]

Damn, now I understand the reason Ludum Dare and its ilk exists and why most of the winners have such focus on one single fun mechanic
Kill me now for wasting so much time before on joining them for publicity

 

[FeelTheRads]

no tutorial

Tutorials are the essence of indie games.

It’s a “classic, yes, but “old school” doesn’t have to mean “old”."

No, old school must mean "pixolated".

 

[Knut]

he has a point to a certain extent. indie does not equal to art or innovation, it is simply a resource/budget designation. they still have to take market into account as well make a product- a big difference from artistic artifact. this is also a big problem in indie industry (as implied), the lack of distinction between independent developer and artistic games, meaning there should be 3 big market divisions not the binary system that is almost meaningless now.

i agree there is a lack of support for indie games as a business practice, but festival format is adopted from film, and as such it SHOULD tend toward artistic and innovative practices that will later find their more consistent (read: polished with bigger budget) application in the industry. so from this standpoint i think purely commercial indie games should be niche in festivals like indiecade (mostly as a showcase of achievable technical work that preferably still carries some quality outside of mainstream). the problem is denomination, i'm all up for leaving indies what is indie and start adopting terms like "auteur and art games" for truly independent, auteristic and experimental games that evolve the media. so to make long story short, i think his butthurt is understandable but largely misplaced.

the part where he is correct and bothers me more is this schizophrenic speech of "be innovative by following these simple five rules", which is doing favors to no one, because it lacks the correct audience. If you making an art game leaning heavily on vision and experiment, you cannot count on commercial success and should be careful with application of formulas. if my intention is to gather audience and make games a profitable business i have to lean on formulas more to ensure some degree of success, and originality should be a lower priority on my list, i'm probably even better off copying mechanisms that have proven to work and have potential. so both sides are losing from making compromises, making a half-product that lack focus.
but also IMO no one can predict the market and success of a product if you lack the sufficient funds and even then it is uncertain. the emphasized criteria of innovation also seems redundant leftover from modernity, but videogames have began emancipating only recently so it will blows off eventually. the truth is, the good product HAS a formula and it is usually a good practice to balance out comforting familiarity with original content with awareness to whom the work is intented for AND what does the designer himself expect from it. but works that push things forward have to risk more, a thing hard to to in expensive business such as videogames.

videogames are still searching for their proper place in culture and it shows.

 

[V_K]

Nothing wrong with artists being artists. But I question a bit the medium they chose. I think just doing some browserbased / webbased interactive art would more help to bring their point along instead of trying to hamfist it in a videogame.

One word: money.
The way the art market works, you're only getting paid if some rich fag decides to buy your work because he thinks that he can sell it for a lot more after you die. And net art, lacking a unique material object that can be the subject of trade is a very tough sell. Not to mention that there's a rather high entrance barrier to the art world - you'll need an art school degree and a number of connections to get anywhere. You won't get any fame for that either because it's extremely niche stuff.
Experimental games, on the other hand are a whole different beast. They're sold directly to gamers and since there are more gamers than there are contemporary art lovers (by an order of a couple magnitudes), it can be quite profitable, especially if the game is good (case in point: Amanita Design). They're also still a new thing, thus can generate a reasonable amount of hype. Which, unlike in the art world where the two can be unrelated, in turn can generate a reasonable amount of sales. Thus it's just a lot more profitable to call yourself an experimental game designer than a net artist.

 

[Haba]

"RPG codex game festival"? Has a nice ring to it.

CodexCon 2015?
- six hour panel discussion arguing about "what is an RPG"
- at gala dinner we give out our annual "RPGCodex Least Shitty RPG of the Year" -award
- try your luck at seducing MCA at the parties!

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

"RPG codex game festival"? Has a nice ring to it.

CodexCon 2015?
- six hour panel discussion arguing about "what is an RPG"
- at gala dinner we give out our annual "RPGCodex Least Shitty RPG of the Year" -award
- try your luck at seducing MCA at the parties!

I like the sound of that. Possibly also:

- booth trannies
- a discussion chaired by Cleve on the decline of Western civilisation and the failure of the sapiens experiment
- a section of the hall cordoned-off for discussion of recent Bioware games, known as Retardoland.
- newbie-friendly introduction to modern RPG systems. Run by Grunker and Excidium.

I think this could have a lot of industry and mainstream appeal.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

would I be allowed to "man" a "stall"

 

[tuluse]

So RPG Fest with different categories is the answer. Make it a combination of expert panel and people's choice, so the experts can't get pretentious. How about reaching out to other RPG websites and making it big?

The thing is other RPG sites don't have the same taste the codex does. They might note problems with modern RPGs, but they don't care about action vs tactical, turn based vs real time, etc.

I suppose it might not matter as much if we're just voting on what indie rpgs look interesting, but I just don't know if there is enough common ground to cooperate on.

 

[gromit]

i agree there is a lack of support for indie games as a business practice, but festival format is adopted from film, and as such it SHOULD tend toward artistic and innovative practices that will later find their more consistent (read: polished with bigger budget) application in the industry. so from this standpoint i think purely commercial indie games should be niche in festivals like indiecade

Good musings... this part specifically makes me think they should select a handful to "screen" out of competition. That would also nicely solve the "but it IS independent" thing, if someone like Double-Fine knocks on the door.

In the case of these three games, though, or inXile, they'd still end up with a serious mismatch between the target audience, and where their effort is going. Reading all the "time for an RPG Fest" stuff is cracking me up... but if someone figures out a way to make it work, well: more power to you, and I will see you there. Just try and take MCA from me, you bitches.

A more realistic goal would be a showcase / convention for "small commercial games" with a broad selection of categories. I wish whoever luck in defining agreeable entry criteria for that. Is it funding itself? The source of funds? Team size? Do all of those subdivide into different categories? "Out of competition" will be twice as important, if awards are necessary at all.

But I question a bit the medium they chose. I think just doing some browserbased / webbased interactive art would more help to bring their point along instead of trying to hamfist it in a videogame.

You mean like this? I'm guessing "compiled code, uses GPU" isn't the actual distinction, so is it that many call them "games?" Many of them are, plain and simple. Even if most of them are plain, and simple.

...and it's not exactly hard to find pages and pages of indignant crankiness, kicked off by a creator or critic saying "but it's not supposed to be a game, it's an communicative interactive experience."

 

[felipepepe]

So RPG Fest with different categories is the answer. Make it a combination of expert panel and people's choice, so the experts can't get pretentious. How about reaching out to other RPG websites and making it big?

The thing is other RPG sites don't have the same taste the codex does. They might note problems with modern RPGs, but they don't care about action vs tactical, turn based vs real time, etc.

I suppose it might not matter as much if we're just voting on what indie rpgs look interesting, but I just don't know if there is enough common ground to cooperate on.

The Watch isn't that different in taste from the Codex. The undead roaming the ruins of NMA and Duck and Cover probably would be cool as well.

And we have a nice range of devs, both indie and opresssed by company overlords, that could be guest judges and what not.

 

[tuluse]

The Watch isn't that different in taste from the Codex. The undead roaming the ruins of NMA and Duck and Cover probably would be cool as well.

And we have a nice range of devs, both indie and opresssed by company overlords, that could be guest judges and what not.

The Watch was up in arms because we voted Fallout 1 higher than 3 in our list. Multiple posters claiming this shows some kind of "bias" and that Fallout 3 was objectively more fun.

So, I'm just not sure.

 

[Davaris]

The thing is other RPG sites don't have the same taste the codex does. They might note problems with modern RPGs, but they don't care about action vs tactical, turn based vs real time, etc.

I suppose it might not matter as much if we're just voting on what indie rpgs look interesting, but I just don't know if there is enough common ground to cooperate on.

Problems will occur if there's an award for universal RPG of the Year, which makes no sense to me. Give people just one vote and they choose which category they want to spend it on and you deal with that.

I don't think it should be restricted to Indies though. That could become pretentious given enough time.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

They can't make anything anyone would pay for voluntarily, so they are pushing the arty angle to secure government grants. Bogus intellectuals pressing the hoi polloi, into paying for their lifestyle choices, is a very old game.

It's the opposite. They are making "games" that people buy (directly or donate money to them) while people making ambitious games often can't make a living from it. They also block out the coverage of ambitious games so that their drug buddies would look more important.

 

[Knut]

That would also nicely solve the "but it IS independent" thing, if someone like Double-Fine knocks on the door.

exactly

...and it's not exactly hard to find pages and pages of indignant crankiness, kicked off by a creator or critic saying "but it's not supposed to be a game, it's an communicative interactive experience."

this precisely shows why ludology needs to develop further into broader academic discipline. right now there is just too much unproductive muddling about in other fields.

 

[StaticSpine]

"RPG codex game festival"? Has a nice ring to it.

CodexCon 2015?
- six hour panel discussion arguing about "what is an RPG"
- at gala dinner we give out our annual "RPGCodex Least Shitty RPG of the Year" -award
- try your luck at seducing MCA at the parties!

There should also be a lecture about how to balance RPG.

 

[Jaesun]

There should also be a lecture about how to balance RPG.

:codexdiscussesbalance:

 

[Aterdux Entertainment]

Indiecade apologized about one juror on their twitter feed: https://twitter.com/IndieCade/status/511639674910441472 I wonder which one they meant This doesn't change much anyway.

 

[Irxy]

Nothing new, really. I was very optimistic when indies started to emerge years back, since hey, the devs don't need publishers anymore, hi-end graphics etc and can just design the games they want!
Turned out all they wanted to design were retarded clones of the '90s era console platformers and other similar garbage, with some trivial physics based mechanic or other boring fluff thrown in, at best. And I don't even want to bring up those barely playable "art" things.
Complex mechanics, interesting genre shifts and mixes, plots not limited by target market censoreship and the number of paid voice overs?.. Yeah, right. Typical commercial games of the '90s and earlier did more experimentation and innovation than those useless hipster "indies" do nowadays.
The only reason this public can't get through publishers is because they're completely talentless pompous posers, basically parasites on the industry.

p.s. There are, of course, notable exceptions.

 

[daveyd]

The only reason this public can't get through publishers is because they're completely talentless pompous posers, basically parasites on the industry.

p.s. There are, of course, notable exceptions.

Such as? I keep hearing how Super Meat Boy is amazing and it got 9/10 all over the place, but it still looks and sounds like a shitty NES platformer.

 

[Markman]

The only reason this public can't get through publishers is because they're completely talentless pompous posers, basically parasites on the industry.

p.s. There are, of course, notable exceptions.

Such as? I keep hearing how Super Meat Boy is amazing and it got 9/10 all over the place, but it still looks and sounds like a shitty NES platformer.

From top of my head

Garrys mod
Killing floor
Dayz
Binding of Isaac
Rogue Legacy
Papers Please
Monaco
Hotline Miami
Van Helsing aRPG's
Trine series
Expedition Conquistador

Theres more but the list is getting long.
Just skip the shitty clones and you'll do fine in the indie jungle.

 

[HiddenX]

The Watch isn't that different in taste from the Codex. The undead roaming the ruins of NMA and Duck and Cover probably would be cool as well.

And we have a nice range of devs, both indie and opresssed by company overlords, that could be guest judges and what not.

The Watch was up in arms because we voted Fallout 1 higher than 3 in our list. Multiple posters claiming this shows some kind of "bias" and that Fallout 3 was objectively more fun.

So, I'm just not sure.

Don't spread legends here

On Topic:
Game rules can be simple or complex. In all cases it is important that

• you find a way that the gamer can understand the rules
• the rules allow interesting, challenging and fun game situations (diversity)

And old saying under developers is the KISS principle:
Keep It Stupid Simple.

I prefer my version:
Keep It Smart & Simple.

Meaning:
Make software in such a way that is accessible, easy to use and understandable for the user. Keep the complexity in your software, not in the GUI.
And the software must be as complex as the problem to solve requires, but not more.

 

[Rake]

The Watch isn't that different in taste from the Codex. The undead roaming the ruins of NMA and Duck and Cover probably would be cool as well.

And we have a nice range of devs, both indie and opresssed by company overlords, that could be guest judges and what not.

The Watch was up in arms because we voted Fallout 1 higher than 3 in our list. Multiple posters claiming this shows some kind of "bias" and that Fallout 3 was objectively more fun.

So, I'm just not sure.

Don't spread legends here

Fallout 3 is still too high